This evening, I went to a performance of the MSU Symphony Orchestra to hear some real music. They played "Overture to Oberon" by Carl Maria von Weber, "Concerto for Flute and Orchestra" by James Willey (a new piece), and "Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major" by Serge Prokofiev. I went mostly to hear a flute played well (I've almost forgotten what that sounds like, which means I sound extra wacky when I play, as infrequently as that is) and to hear the Prokofiev piece.
 
At the end of the new Concerto, the guy sitting next to me stands up. He then begins to exit the row (we're in the middle of a row), and I thought, "How rude!" The conductor was looking at him the whole time and gesturing, so I came to realize that I'd been sitting next to the composer! The mind boggles. During the intermission, then, I talked with the composer. It turns out he was a faculty member at my dad's alma mater, so we talked a little about that. He said that science and math students tended to be good at music theory and wished me luck in finding the Unified Field Theory, which was quite nice of him.
 
I'd never heard the Prokofiev before, so it was extra awesome. The third movement, especially, sounded like it should be the soundtrack to a science fiction movie... something in the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars tradition, maybe (I haven't read any of those books since I tried one as a young'un, so that assessment may be a little off). Afterwards, talking to the composer-who-was-sitting-next-to-me, he said he pictured the last movement as describing a giant machine--perhaps apt, given the context in which Prokofiev was writing. Of course, that's it, I thought, this would make the perfect soundtrack to Fritz Lang's Metropolis! (Metropolis was the first science fiction movie ever--black-and-white and SILENT.)
 
After the concert, I then ran into a clump of astro/physics grad students. There's something about us physics people and good music....